Finish the year on a strong note by cleaning out your email inbox and sending thank-you notes to colleagues and managers, Suzanne Gelb writes. Set aside some time to improve your LinkedIn presence, and work on shifting to a healthier sleep routine in 2018.

Software as a service often relies on customer self-service for lower-priced offerings or enterprise sales for low-volume, high-price software. However, transactional selling is the most common SaaS sales model, allowing companies to scale up their sales efforts as they expand in size.

Sales calls often fall flat when representatives rehearse too much beforehand, which can result in inauthentic conversations. However, it can be just as damaging for sales reps to be overly exuberant or talk so much the prospect doesn't get to detail his needs, writes Lori Turner-Wilson.

Brands have been increasingly turning to lookbook layouts to show off their product offerings online, writes Nikki Gilliland. Formats such as Uniqlo's grid format allow a good view of the product range at a glimpse while letting customers click on particular items to learn more.

As investors await Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen's expected announcement of a final interest-rate increase this year, they will be more interested in any hints on the pace of rate increases in 2018 and the central bank's forecast for how proposed tax cuts will affect the economy. "While the tax package is not a game changer, it does add more confidence that the Fed can keep going" with its rate increases, said Brett Ryan, senior US economist at Deutsche Bank Securities and chairman of SIFMA's economic advisory group. Read SIFMA's Economic Advisory Roundtable Forecast.

The Joint Committee on Taxation has projected that the Senate tax overhaul would increase growth by just 0.08% each year. Tax cuts have historically had "very little power to affect economic growth," writes Eduardo Porter.

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has spoken out about the advantages Oracle holds over cloud competitors Amazon.com, Salesforce.com and Workday. While Ellison finds Amazon's database lacking, he said Oracle is bringing in software-as-a-service customers faster than Salesforce and that Workday lacks the platform needed to topple Oracle.

Machine learning will continue to allow for improved efficiency, agility and a better customer focus as it evolves, according to SCO and Trifacta co-founder Joseph Hellerstein. "Machine learning can find more efficient, cost-effective scenarios to operate complex systems based on quality data without risking disruption and noncompliance," Hellerstein said.

A study in Science says humans likely began migrating from Africa as early as 120,000 years ago. "Indeed, what we are seeing in the behavioral record is that the spread of so-called modern human behaviors did not occur in a simple time-transgressive process from west to east," said study co-author Christopher Bae of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.